346 



THE CIVIL ENGINEER AND ARCHITECT'S JOURNAL. 



[September, 



are at stake, and the danger to tlieir selfishness is great enough to 

 make them forget their hatred of his gifts ; if they be saved by his 

 inspirations, how they cheer, bow they triumpli, how they bend, how 

 they exult, with almost as much enthusiasm and delight as they would 

 follow him to the block or the gallows. 



Our virtues are built on our vices, our power lies in our weakness, 

 and next to the disgust at being born, is the disgrace of belonging to 

 such a species. 



Of all human farces enacted, commend me to the Academy dinner! 

 It is unquestionably the most brilliant imposture in Europe ? I have 

 witnessed this "Comedie" for forty years! — the same speeches — the 

 same healths — the same anticipation of great things, the same perpe- 

 tuation of small ones — the same row of tip-toes — the same Lords, and 

 ladies, and chancellors — the same wigs — tlie same clouds — the same 

 bits of column, and curtain, and rod coat — the same silks, the same 

 satins — the same doing the amiable — the same doing the intellectual 

 — the same doing the sentimental — the same doing the dandy and the 

 beauty — the member and the mayor — the Peer and Prince — the same 

 discussions during claret on the tone of Lady Mary's bonnet, and Lady 

 Charlotte's cheek— the same heat, the same gossip — the same "Non 

 Nobis," &c., — the same " Hail Star," &c. — the same wine — the same 

 ennui; when up they all get full of loyalty and line arts— the minis- 

 ters to their cliques, the members to their clubs, the artists to their 

 indigestion and blue pill, those who have no centres cursing those who 

 have, and retiring to sleep, if they can, with vengeance in their livers, 

 believe they have advanced High Art? Tell me a vaudeville equal 

 to this — tell me a Molitre, who can exceed it — tell me a delusion of 

 Bedlam that can beat it. Would 1 abolish it? certainly not ; abolish 

 the Academy dinner, and the next shooting season, the artist would 

 be shown to the housekeeper's table ! Would I destroy the Academy? 

 Not I — though it is a slavish organ of the vanities of fashion, it is a 

 bulwark against its insolence! Reform it, my respectable, friends, 

 cleanse it — sweep it — preserve it — scrape it — whitewash it — re-model 

 and reconsider it laws, fit them for the time — new fashion its consti- 

 tution — double the paltry salary of its officers — unite it with the 

 people, and raise its importance, and the art will be saved and the 

 Academy too. 



It is at present, with all its faults, a beautiful charity for theafllicted, 

 and perfection itself in providing objects for the use of its funds. Its 

 charity will always be in request whilst its despotism is never con- 

 trouled ; and if Europe should wish to know the secret of providing 

 the lazar house with patients, they have only to consult [the Hanging 

 Committee of Trafalgar Square. 



To conclude, it is hoped this just and necessary exposure of the 

 Keeper will shew him the responsibily of his position. There is no 

 youth so sensitive to cruelty as a student in art, and there is nothing 

 so cruel as a wanton exercise of power, because you possess it, at the 

 expense of the pride and delicacy of a youth of talent, who, after days 

 and nights of anxiety and diligence, brings, with a beating heart, the 

 result of his labours for the judgment of one, intrigue has placed above 

 him, without one half his knowledge, and who, secure in his Keeper- 

 ship, and his imagined superiority, proves it not by cheering on a 

 deserving boy, but by hooting him down, at the expence of his peace, 

 and the best feelings of his being. 



Mr. Seguier's kindness enabled the youth to regain his self-confi- 

 dence, but had tue Keeper of the National Gallery been an Acade- 

 mician, he would have backed the Keeper of the Academy, and pre- 

 vented this boy from exhibiting his talents to the public. Luckily for 

 art and himself he was not, and this brings us to the question, in No. 3, 

 how far Academicians ought to be allowed any position out of the Aca- 

 demy, or ought to have anv chance given them, by the Minister, of ex- 

 tending their pernicious influence beyond their own walls, still reeking 

 with the slime of the crawling creatures of sixty-eight. 



TiMON. 



ON THE PRESENT STATE, PROSPECTS, AND THEORY OF 

 PAINTING. 



Sir, — I congratulate you on the appearance of a second Timon ; 

 and I agree with much, and sympathise with more, of what he says ; 

 but he, who self-evidently is a man of talent, and of no common grade, 

 must not be permitted to croak, nor does it become the Athenian more 

 than his assumed disguise, which should have been a Spartan's garb. 



Timon is a disappointed man, and so am I; yet methinks I say cor- 

 rectly that such men do not always see clearly, and attribute to the 

 true cause much, very much, of their alleged neglect, and more of 

 their lack of pelf: society, in all ages, has been charged, perhaps too 



loosely, with ingratitude to its benefactors, and I, having personally 

 felt some of it, know the fact, and often have I seen it exemplifieil in 

 some of my dearest friends, among whom I could tell names of no little 

 worth ; but we must not forget that such men toil over things often 

 above their individual resources, and always of slow not every-duy 

 sale, the trader then, if I may use the term, must be — poor. 



High art has confessedly been neglected, but what has not ? Southey 

 justly said, " It requires one man's life to develope a principle, and 

 that of another to see it enforced;" and vpell may it be so, in this 

 kingdom especially, where all is left to individual enterprise or com- 

 mercial speculation; but, 1 say fearlessly, high art will rise, the second 

 advent of painting is at hand ; and, fostered by a British Parliament, 

 enforced by a Royal Commission, that Commission, save one » defect, 

 constituted mure liberally than any which has existed before, — so free 

 from all possible bias, the veriest caviller cannot charge upon it one 

 factor one probability of prejudice or favour; thus fostered, I say, 

 and thus enforced, patronized by his Queen and her liberal-minded 

 consort, British art shall daily advance, and, surrounded by a halo of 

 native glory, shall astound the world. But to return : we want a prac- 

 tical board of works, and a free, open, unsophisticated yearly exposi- 

 tione. 



It is said more than two thousand works of merit were refused by 

 the Royal Academy lately : this, indeed, is a disgrace, a real blot on 

 the [lage of English history ; nor does the beauty, the size, or the ar- 

 rangement of the National Gallery lessen the stain. We have, how- 

 ever, achieved some improvement; those miserable efforts of a narrow 

 mind which crept only into name and notoriety in the path of bigotry 

 and fanaticism, — those cruel libels upon worth which called forth 

 Byron's satire, — 



" Europe's worst dauber England's best, — " 



these have been removed by or under the present curator, — but no 

 management can avail us much ; never, never can this abortion of a 

 National Gallery vie with the Louvre of the present day, and much 

 less of that of Napoleon's; nor, indeed, can it vie with the Stafford 

 gallery, or other private collections of mighty worth. 



Let Timon look more to the defects of the system than of the men : 

 let him doff the Cynic's garb and struggle on: I, for one, will twine a 

 laurel round his head, for I am sadly wrong if I do not recognise the 

 head which has earned one. But why so much gall in the ink? 'Twill 

 flow without freely. Why so personal towards Sir Robert Peel? and, 

 more, why so heavy on Eastlake ? — both are men, and, " Humanum 

 est errare." Peel is confessedly a lover of the arts : Eastlake a gentle- 

 manly, thinking, assiduous, nay indefatigable and honourable man, a 

 most respectable artist, and confessedly the best read one, with the 

 best artistic library in England : the very faults which Timon alludes 

 to are highly creditable to him as a secretary. What, in the name of 

 luiman reason, can be do but accumulate facts, on fresco, for instance, 

 however the whole may become a conglomeiite ? Fresco never yet 

 was practised by man with one single ray of light from true theory — 

 the rule of practice ; on the contrary, all, all has been chance and ca- 

 price, equally as regards the lime and the pigment — the beauty and 

 the permanence. Hitherto we have progressed little; and assuredly 

 the so-called frescos of the late exhibition give us infant hope alone, 

 and that, as a consequence, the base on which the whole were raised 

 was bad — the laths and rough-cast rotten and ill-applied, merely 

 made, in fact, like the razors of Pindar's Jew, to " sell, not to shave," 

 to fill the pockets of the colourman alone, as shopkeepers, not one of 

 whom either knevv the nature or properties of cements, a web the 

 more than of 



" All the poor compounds which they sell ;" 



this was covered by plaster nearly worthless, and no blame, good 

 Timon, to the Commissioners either, for they had read and listened, 

 inquired, and of good men and true, men of worth and genius like Cor- 

 nelius, and Morr, and Overbeck : but of what avail ? Cornelius copied 

 the one of two lines of ancient practice — the long keeping of lime : 

 Cornelius had used it again and again, and therefore warranted it, 

 precisely as the old woman warranted her magpie, to live an hundred 

 years ; but Cornelius has not yet lived half the hundred to see the 

 effect ! Eastlake, after unwearied and incessant research, recom- 

 mended the practice of Pallomino — frequent washings — to which he 

 added some keeping. So much for unenlightened practice, and that 

 from a climate infinitely different from ours ; and on such a compound 

 — one might almost have said compost — artists new to the practice, 

 ignorant of the theory, biassed perhaps also by the rude aspirations of 



» The palpable defect of haviug: no scientific as well as artistic aid ; on the valuable 

 secretary is tlierefore thrown the judgment of matters requiring other qualifications, and 

 leaving liim open eitlier to publish error, directly or indirectly, through sheer theoretic — 

 where he would need—" practical" advice. 



